


It's Not the Red Thread

by checkersfade, CURUS



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Orphanage, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Children, M/M, Orphanage, Orphans, Right now it's cute., Will be sad later.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkersfade/pseuds/checkersfade, https://archiveofourown.org/users/CURUS/pseuds/CURUS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something like this effects more than just one person. It effects two. Nothing can happen without making both ends of our thread quiver from the events that happen, threatening to rip apart the red string tying me to him. </p><p>This is not only my story. It's ours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not the Red Thread

 

 

> _"Like the early morning dew, so is love_  
>  _For it refreshes."_
> 
>  

I never thought anything like this would happen. Not to someone like me. Anyone else but me. Yet I can't even begin to explain to you how happy I am that it did happen. I count myself lucky that it happened, but this isn't just about me. It can't ever be about only me. Something like this effects more than just one person. It effects two. Nothing can happen without making both ends of our thread quiver from the events that happen, threatening to rip apart the red string tying me to him. 

This is not only my story. It's ours. 

\---

One of my first and less unhappy memories of childhood is going to the toy store. With my parents both at work, I had one of the servants take me, their occupation as butler giving them the task of also being a sort of "body guard" to me. I was given an allowance and had been told I could buy any toy I wanted, no price being too heavy for my family. We basically swam in cash. 

There were big toys, like model rockets or train sets, toys that any child would practically scream and cry over before becoming bored with it and throwing it aside. That's what my butler assumed I would buy, under the impression that I was like any other spoiled rich kid. But the one thing that caught my eye was a bunny tossed into the clearance bin, red paper pasted on one side of the tub so anyone could see that these were unwanted. It had a missing eye and its ear was torn; it didn't look like any kid would want it. I picked it up out of the box and held it to me, held it right against my chest in a hold akin to a protective parent or sibling, promising to take care of it. That bunny was my first friend.

I was never the kind of person people liked to talk to. People had a habit of basing their judgement on external appearance alone. And apparently, they judged me badly even from across a room. It was even worse when I started getting into fights, one right after another, like a strange and unhealthy pattern. I was quickly labeled as a problem child and the other kids were quick to stay away from me, not only because their parents told them to but because they easily feared me. They feared the empty look in my eyes when I got hit. Like it didn't phase me. I had gotten into a lot of fights, even though most of the time I didn't start them. It happened so often that I had to learn to tend to my own wounds because the servants wanted me to be more independent. I think they just got tired of dealing with me. Everyone did. Even mom and dad.

My parents and I never had the best relationship. They always preferred my younger brother, even before they found out about my... "condition." They always favored how he never caused them trouble or embarrassed them at social events. After a while, they were determined to get rid of me so that they didn't have to live with the burden and shame of having a broken child. At first, they locked me away in a room of my own, fitted with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and all the things I would need to pretty much take care of myself. I was six when this happened. They expected a six year old to accept isolation and care for himself the same way a teenager would.

At the beginning of my incarceration, I cried and pleaded for someone to let me out, beating on the walls and the doors and the glass of the barred windows until my palms were red and sore or bleeding entirely, but eventually the reality set in that no one was going to help me. I'm pretty sure my own little brother didn't even know I existed anymore, if he ever did at all. I lived like that for about a year or so before I couldn't take it anymore. I started devising different escape plans, a few of them almost working, almost leading me to freedom outside of my "castle." My parents didn't like that very much, the risk of their shameful secret getting loose like an ill or deadly animal, so they did the next best thing: they gave me up. The flew me from Germany to America on my own, where I was delivered to an orphanage in the middle of nowhere. A seven year old child, sent by himself to an orphanage because his family didn't want him smearing their name any more.

Here is where I met him. Here is where our story began to weave itself together.

\---

The foster mother introduced me to the other children I would be living with, like my new family, as if they would accept me right off the bat. How hilarious. There were about fifteen children in total, and all of them seemed intimidated by me. They probably assumed I was a problem child right away due to the many bandages and bruises covering my body. They stare at me like they were looking at the new addition in the local zoo. I don't blame them. I've always been a problem child, and it won't be any different here.

After the terrible attempt at introductions, the kids dispersed and went off to do their own thing while I took up an unused corner of the room with my plush rabbit that I'd had since I was three, his eye still missing and his ear still torn up. I think even the stuffing was spilling out from somewhere. I held it as protectively as day one. It was the first thing I bought on my own and it was my only friend, I didn't need anyone else. My rabbit didn't stare, it didn't laugh, it didn't hit, it accepted me, in stale silence. 

I would've preferred to stay outside, but our foster mother, Anne, insisted that I "be more social and make friends." It was all nonsense to me. I didn't see a point when most of them would get taken away into new families at any time. They would be picked out of this human-litter and swept away to some warm and cozy new home and be coddled and loved and smothered with affection by their new moms and dads and possibly even older or younger siblings. Making friends here was pointless.

There was one person, however. One person that seemed more...alive to me than anyone else. More meaningful. At first glance, I could have sworn I was looking at a girl, almost radiating a feminine warmth. It took a little bit of staring to figure out she was really a boy. The first thing I noticed was that he was really pretty, beautiful even. He was pale, almost like if he was sick, but his smile seemed healthy as anyone else, and his eyes, eyes that would seem so strange to anyone else but me with their rose color, seemed as bright as his smile, practically glowing through the bangs of white hair. Under his lip were two moles with one right on top of the other. Like I said, he was pretty. 

His time was spent mostly with the younger children; those who I later learned came from really harsh living conditions or were put here after their parents died. He sort of was like a big brother to them, as if trying to shield them from the depressions of loss or abandonment and help them recover from the blow of being orphaned. He was their umbrella, one with a clear cover that gave them the necessary shelter while still letting them see the views around them. I thought it was nice of him.

I didn't know I was doing it, but I found myself staring at the boy as he played and talked to all the little children around him, children who were not much older or younger than me. I watched how he laughed and made them smile, tickling their sides or playing with them with their toys and sprouting seeds of imagination in them before it was all snuffed out. I didn't even notice the boy coming closer to me until he was crouched down right in front of my knees, staring with those rose eyes into my own.

“What’re you reading?” he asked, pointing at the book in my lap. I followed his motion, but I didn't really understand what he was saying; I still wasn't very good at English, having been born and raised in Germany, but I knew what he meant when he pointed at the book. Without language to communicate, I held it up so that he could read the cover and see the recognizable text in the German language.

“You speak German?” I just nod, only knowing what he asked because I heard the word 'German'. I wished I could speak English better so I could respond to him with my words. But then again, I wasn't really looking for a friend in this place. At the time, I mostly wished to speak English just so I could tell him to leave me alone, tell him that he was wasting his time by even talking to me, let alone try to befriend me.

When he grinned a little, I could see a space between his front teeth, they were both there, but had come in with just a centimeter or two of emptiness between them, “Man, I wish I spoke another language." I saw his stare move just a fraction to my side and then his eyes widened a little bit, "Oh, that’s a cute bunny you got there! Is he your friend?” I understood only about half of what he was saying, but I saw his stare at my friend and I just held my bunny tighter because I thought he was going to try and take it away from me, a tragedy that had already happened more than once back in Germany. My stare must have been cautious and uneasy, since he didn't move to take my cotton-stuffed friend away.

“Kanon, leave the poor boy alone,” Anne scolded the boy as she came in to collect the younger toddlers for their naps, her arms soon occupied by fussy and exhausted children. The boy, Kanon, looked up at her and actually pouted before standing back up. I can see his knees from under his shorts, and I saw he had fabric hanging out of them, like a make-shift skirt.

He looked back down at me and I was given that spaced-toothed smile all over again. “You can call me Clear, if you want. Miss Anne calls me Kanon because it's my name but I like Clear better because Kanon means something girly about flowers and boys like to laugh at me for it." He's rambling. Like a faucet that just turned on, and I don't have the strength to turn it off, "If you need anything, just come find me, okay?” I just stared up at him, my brain slowly trying to process what he said into German so I can understand it, but he’s already walked away before I could properly respond. He said something about flowers and help.

Clear. I think he said to call him Clear… that’s a weird name.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off an rp that CURUS and I thought of but never actually got anywhere beyond that, so I decided to start writing a thing for it. This is my first submission here, so I hope that you all like what you took the time to read (and hopefully finish.)
> 
> Also, the poem at the top is "LOVE" by Peter Hewett (2003). I plan to use a verse for the beginning of each chapter, so lets hope that goes well. Tags and such will be added as the story progresses.


End file.
